Hannah Arendt On Violence: The Opposite of Power

[@GreatBooksProf]

📚Learn more about Hannah Arendt. Watch this video on her most CONTROVERSIAL and compelling idea: The Banality of Evil. 👉 kzbin.info/www/bejne/bnzQYX-HeLBgb6s

[@bigbadleche]

Watching this after hearing about 18 children and 2 adults dead from the shooting in Texas. Thank you for this video. Just learning perspectives like this gives me inspiration and hope

[@paulamills3556]

Thank you, a clear and precise explanation of Arendt's work which offers a very thought-provoking approach to an alternative to militarised security.

[@GreatBooksProf]

Thank you, Paula. I’m glad you enjoyed the video. Thanks for watching!

[@alessandropaini365]

This was great! I am currently studying for an exam of Politics of Conflict and of course Arendt is one of our focus subjects. This video was super helpful for me to better understand her discourse! :)

[@GreatBooksProf]

Thanks Alessandro! I’m glad you found the video helpful. Good luck on your exam!

[@ChaosSpiritBear]

I have a question about Arendt's theory of violence as an opposite of power. Is it possible to imagine agents of violence (i.e, police, military, rebels, terrorists, etc) as having a sort of power through their ability to "act in concert" (44)? That is to say, by utilizing violence in favour of a particular political power, couldn't we suggest that these perpetrators are "empowering" a particular political figure? I can accept that power and capacity for violence are not synonymous, but I struggle to see how they are opposites; since the enlarged capacity for violence, whether it benefits a sovereign or a resistance movement, still requires a certain consensus among the participants of violence.

[@Knaeben]

The need to use violence is a form of impotence. It comes from fear, not from a position of actual power.

[@AvrilLBS]

I love your videos. I have a political thought class and I am studying for the exam by also getting help from your videos, they are very informative. Thank you!

[@GreatBooksProf]

That’s so great to hear! I’m glad you’re finding them useful. Good luck on your exam. 📚

[@malathydamodaran7012]

was trying to understand the same for past 2 weeks. glad i found this video. understood the same within minutes. love from india

[@GreatBooksProf]

Happy to hear this video was helpful! Thanks for your comment.

[@izzidolan2101]

Thank you for helping me understand this. I have to write an essay about this but was not taught it in a way that was easy to understand. THANK YOUUU

[@GreatBooksProf]

Hey Izzi, I’m glad I could help. Good luck on your essay! 📚👍

[@ananyabhadauria3940]

I'm at the University of Oxford and I have a 9AM lecture that requires me to make a ppt on this and you just saved me, thankkkyou!

[@GreatBooksProf]

Glad I could help! Good luck on your presentation!

[@charleskalish8230]

Great Books Prof: A quick thanks for your work!

[@GreatBooksProf]

Thanks for watching!

[@PureAnointing]

This is really great. Thank you for you explanations of this powerful perspective.

[@GreatBooksProf]

You're so welcome!

[@dillonvado]

Thank you for these videos on Arendt!! Really helping me get a picture of her main ideas quickly and as a slow reader but complex thinker I really appreciate that. Fascinating spectrum she has perceived here… makes me wonder more about the individual sense of power and one finding their own sense of power through reflection and intentional action in their life. I’ve seen some references of her mentioning that suburban life an individualism are poisonous to real communal thinking and would love to learn more about that overall, but this and the banality of evil video were great introductions to the subject so thank you!

[@GreatBooksProf]

Hi Dillon, Thanks for this comment. I’m glad you enjoyed the videos! Arendt is a pretty fascinating thinker. Her work can be complex and her thinking is somewhat idiosyncratic but she definitely sees problems in original ways! She understood power to be exclusively a group phenomenon. We only have power when we act in concert. Individually we do however have the capacity for ACTION so long as public spaces and institutions are maintained, which is why she perceived modern mass society as a kind of threat. In her view it promotes individualism and a kind of disconnection from public life. This is satisfying to an extent but threatens to make our activities meaningless. 😶

[@GEnghis559]

Arendt is truly a brilliant person, her thought on power and violence, and comparing the two is very juxtaposed.

[@danielaguzman6641]

How so? To me it seems like an obvious connection, but maybe I’m missing out on something :)

[@IASwithVigour]

Very crisp explanation sir, thank you so much

[@GreatBooksProf]

Glad you found it helpful. Are you studying Arendt in a class?

[@AshlyJiju]

Thank you for this Sir! Your explanation was very clear.

[@GreatBooksProf]

You're welcome, Ashly! I'm glad you found the video useful. Are you studying Arendt right now?

[@TennesseeJed]

Like so many wonderful thoughts, it's easy to do but difficult to be.

[@paraboxboland2913]

Great video, thank you for your hard work.

[@GreatBooksProf]

Thanks for your kind comment, and thanks for watching!

[@OneAdam12Adam]

It's curious why our corporate media companies never feature the works of people like Arendt. It's very telling. Most programming does not provoke thought. The news is divisive and not focused on solutions or thought.

[@ElusiveLabs]

Thanks for this great breakdown.

[@GreatBooksProf]

You’re welcome!

[@tomasguedesvaz5310]

very very good, thank you so much !!!

[@GreatBooksProf]

You're most welcome! Thanks for watching!

[@juliafieldss]

Thank your so much for your explanation. It's an amazing book, but her thoughts are sometimes hard to follow throw.

[@GreatBooksProf]

You’re welcome! Her work can be dense at times. And she often approaches questions from unexpected angles, making it hard to understand her. But I agree: the text is worth the work it takes to understand it.

[@janealveyharris2433]

Listening to this in Texas today gives me hope. 89% of Americans agree there needs to be common sense gun reform, yet because of misdirection sound bites from politicians and gun lobbyists, we’re at each other’s throats as if we disagree. When our voice come together and demand our representatives speak for us and not for special interest groups.

[@riteshsharma2273]

Very helpful video

[@GreatBooksProf]

Thanks Ritesh. Glad you found it useful. Are you reading Arendt right now?

[@riteshsharma2273]

Yes Sir I am reading her political theory.

[@GreatBooksProf]

@@riteshsharma2273 Great! Happy reading!

[@riteshsharma2273]

Thank you sir

[@hokulealinda]

Watching this -- trying to make sense of the genocide in Gaza. Many thanks.

[@markofsaltburn]

Timely in March 2022.

[@GreatBooksProf]

Very true.

[@आदित्य-फ4प]

Thankyou

[@GreatBooksProf]

You're very welcome!

[@lunthuak2114]

how would she have incorporated structural violence in this theory? any thoughts?

[@connorpeppermint8635]

I can't speak to how she would have incorporated it but it would make sense to me that racist policies to disenfranchise non whites fits pretty neatly into Arendts assessment of threanted power = temptation of violence.

[@JohannesC-c9k]

Yes I think she is right.

[@ElkoJohn]

And in the other corner: ''1984'' + ''Brave New World'' ``````````````````````````````` *FEAR* + *MANUFACTURED CONSENT* that's how the rich & powerful run the show they are the ''Big Club'' rulers and we ain't included.``````````````` cheers 🙂

[@birdwatchingandmoltoaltro4985]

Thank u

[@GreatBooksProf]

You're welcome!

[@jensphiliphohmann1876]

Eichmann was neither a monster nor insane, but neither he was only an unpolitical technocrat but a faithful National Socialist. This faith - kind of a religion - determined him to take part in the holocaust. Not because he was "a machine" or "stopped thinking" but because he believed his actions to be necessary. Hannah Arendt seems to have fallen for Eichmann's apology in court.

[@justdanthankyou6399]

Is your implication here that religion is the motivating force that allows evil?

[@rozalialuks6583]

IT WOULD BE GREAT if you could prepare "something" comparing Hannahs' moment - Eichman - Jews - Zionism/Israel and the Massacre of Palestinians by Jews? Thanks! Greetings from Brasil #judeuslivresporPALESTINALIVRE

[@matthewjackson9615]

With kings, nations, and private individuals, the strongest assume to themselves rights over the weakest, and the same rule is followed by animals, by matter, by the elements, so that everything is performed in the universe by violence. And that order which we blame with some appearance of justice is the most universal, most absolute, most unchangeable, and most ancient law of nature. Luc de Clapiers The Maxim above pretty much settles things. Arendt doesn't know what the hell she's talking about.

[@Nautiimusic]

This seems like a major oversimplification of every phenomenon listed. Is this not falsely conflating violence with chaos, and violence with strength? For example, in regard to matter and the elements. Order is sure, far more unlikely than chaos. But chaos and its results are not necessarily always violent. Also, strength seems subjective in many cases. Many people don't regard Putin as strong, but rather a weak, pathetic child. His resorting to violence seems, at laast in many subjective senses, not a display of strength but of pure violence and little more. Are you averse to the belief that progress is chronological as opposed to circular? Even if so, and even taking history itself to be circular and liberal humanism to be futile (ex. moving away from violence/ torture,) can it not still be a virtue to pursue it in our lifetime anyway?

[@markofsaltburn]

Not really; it vindicates her. Whatever violence is or isn’t, however prevalent violence is or isn’t- as defined by de Clapiers - it is, by definition, necessarily contiguous with authority, and this is evident in not just global but personal relations - it is even there in our earliest parental interactions. It is evident in all political relations that rely on violence - when violence is used in the absence of authority, then it becomes the necessary norm in political relations, and the more people you need to have power over, the more still you continue to need to use violence in place of non-violent authority; if you are compelled to use violence, then you’re not free, because you then have diminished power over your own choices. Machiavelli says that you can lose the court and survive, but if you lose the people, you’re finished. This is why a country like Russia has been stuck - culturally and politically - in perpetual cycles of failure in the modern era, because absolutism is its default backstop going back centuries. 5 million capable, mobile high-net-worth Russians with transferable skills have left the country in the 22 years of the Putin era - leaving behind the old, the weak, the institutionalised and the alcoholic - and they won’t go back until he’s gone, the same way that any functional person of self-esteem will leave an abusive spouse at the first opportunity. That is the fundamental transactional law of any universe that contains beings that are capable of exercising rational self-interest. It doesn’t make violence necessarily go away, but it unavoidably make it far less effective than non-violence as a tool of influence.